


Exile

by indraaas



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, challenge mode: romance with no kissing, harder than beating E4 cynthia but I got giratina so wassup, kind of dark?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indraaas/pseuds/indraaas
Summary: This isn’t love, but it isn’t hate; it’s a little give and a whole lot of take.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	1. i think i've seen this film before

**Author's Note:**

> I deleted my tumblr a while back but this snippet continues to cause me grief because I feel like I can do something with this so I'm going to drop this here and let it marinate.
> 
> Title from the Taylor Swift song. Don't own Naruto.

This isn’t love, but it isn’t hate; it’s a little give and a whole lot of take.

Madara shifts against her. He dwarves her tiny body, and she thinks she’s already lost so much of herself in him that whatever regret she feels over this - _them_ , if such a thing exists - will be swallowed whole by the time morning comes and she slips away.

He won’t stop her.

(As often as she says ‘this is the last time’, they both know she’ll be back the next time she can find an excuse.)

He burrows his head in the crook of her neck, breathing whiskey-smooth, whiskey-broken nothings just shy of her ear. He’s drunk and she’s drunk and when he says ‘I love you’ she knows it’s a lie but-

_butbutbut_

She closes her eyes and chokes on the feeling anyway.


	2. breathe me

"I'll kill you one day, you know."

She says it like it's some universal truth: _you are hot and I am cold and when you touch me I burn alive._

"I know," he murmurs, tightening his grip on her. He's killed with these fingers; forged fire and waged war and stolen final breaths like kisses and he tightens his grip on her anyway because she won't break even if he tries.

And he tries. And tries and tries and tries but she refuses to _die_.

"I'll kill you," she repeats, straddling him. Her thighs flex, and for a second he wonders if she'll crush his hips and hopes just to heal him and do it all over again.

"I know."

Her eyes are green (Konoha green, summer green, jealous green _greengreengreen_ so _green_ ) and cold and there's not a drop of Uchiha in her blood, but he looks at those eyes and he's five years old, watching his father cast _Goukakyuu_ for the first time.

A Senju died that day.

They always did.

Her hand wraps around his throat. It's too small to cover the whole thing, her thumb barely brushing the edge of his trachea, but it doesn't matter. She's not stupid enough to crush it, not when she knows how to make it count.

An adjustment, and then she's pressing down on his carotid arteries slowly, softly, the gentle caress of a lover he doesn't notice until his eyes start hurting.

Madara doesn't choke. He's too experienced to choke. Black spots the corners of his vision, his head light and chest heavy, so _heavy_ , as he forgets how to _breathe_ but he can still _breathe_ it's just her eyes her eyes are so green and they burn and 

( _green eyes the senju had green eyes_ )

The pressure is gone. There is no relief in breathing, no sweetness in the air. It's purely mechanical: _breathe in breathe out chest expands chest constricts inhale exhale she'll kill me she won't._

There is a pause - the second before glass hits the floor, a kunai grazing your neck, the liminality of early morning, Sunday rain - and Sakura sinks into his embrace, pressing her lips to the curve of his jaw.

"I want to kill you."

"I know."


	3. redux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi sorry idk what happened I got busy here we go 
> 
> we got plot tho so. thank u to pyro for giving me a plot idea. like long term plot idea.
> 
> side note ffn apparently disabled desktop mode on mobile so if you follow me there and get a notif in like 8 hours there's no double update I just went down and got my laptop lmfao
> 
> also no editing we die like men

"Rise and shine, Sakura! The test results you were waiting for just came in."

Sakura looks up blearily. Try as hard as she might to blink the remnants away, sleep still clings to the corner of her eyes, casting a haze over Shizune's face that doesn't quite disappear as she gets closer and holds out a sheet of paper.

"You know Tsuande-sama doesn't like it when you fall asleep in the lab."

"Ah, well, these biopsies aren't going to test themselves," Sakura laughs. "Speaking of biopsies - test says that the donor is a perfect HLA match! Looks like Hayate will be getting a new set of lungs soon."

"Go home, Sakura," Shizune says firmly. Her face is still a little blurry, but Sakura can make out the motherly disapproval in her brown eyes. She looks so much like Tsunade-shishou when she frowns like that.

"I promised Byakuya I'd run a biopsy for him. One of his cousin's has been sick for a while now and they've tested for everything under the sun, apparently. He wants me to make sure she doesn't have _mito._ It's a long shot given what a garbage diagnosis it is, but--"

"Sakura. Go home."

Home. Home sounds weird to her ears, like an untuned piano echoing in a concert hall. How long has it been since she last went home? A day? A week? A year, maybe? Time is meaningless within the hospital walls. 2200; a child's umbilical cord is cut just as time of death is called for the person across the hall. The line blurs together until it doesn't exist at all, and Sakura has been floating in that foggy unknown for so long she can't find her way out.

"Okay, fine, you win," Sakura surrenders, making a show of snapping off her gloves and folding her coat neatly. "Just make sure Tsunade-shishou finds out about Hayate's match so we can pick a date to do the transplant, okay? Sooner the better, I think he said he and Yugao were going to have a spring wedding."

* * *

Konoha in the summer is a sight to behold. The trees are a lush and vibrant shade of green that no amount of silk dye can hope to emulate, though the street-vendors do try, holding up bolts of cloth for patrons to hem and haw over. The air is crisp, thick with the scent of fruits and sweets, and more than once Sakura has to stop herself from buying a snack from every other stand. No point in spoiling her appetite when she's got ramen to look forward to.

"Sakura!" Ino shouts, waving from her flower stall. "Heading home?"

Ino's eyes are beautiful, sky-blue and maybe even a little green if she holds up the right calla lily, and Sakura thinks she could spend forever memorizing the way they light up when she smiles. 

"No, I'm going to meet Naruto and Sasuke at Ichiraku. Wanna play hooky?" Sakura says, waggling her brows. "I'm sure Inoichi-ojii won't mind!"

Ino just laughs. "Go home, Sakura."

Sakura rolls her eyes and stalks off, making a silent vow to figure out just how it is the 'Tsunade-to-Shizune-to-Ino' information pipeline works so she can rig it against them. _One_ mom is enough, she doesn't need three to-

Four. She has four mothers.

_Mother your mother your mother's name is-_

"If you're not careful, you might get lost on the road of life," Kakashi teases with a gentle tap to her elbow. Sakura shakes her head, shooting Kakashi a wry grin as she leads them into the stand.

"Good thing I'm not as directionally challenged as you are."

Kakashi mutters something about kids lacking respect for their elders, to which Sakura's ready to make a snide retort about retirement homes, when she's struck by how much _older_ he looks. It's not like she's stupid - she _knows_ he's got a couple years on them, but shinobi generally don't live long enough for her to notice the subtle signs of aging: tiny crows feet, permanent stress lines even his hitae-ate, proudly gleaming with the _shinobi_ kanji on it, can't hide, the way his Sharingan is made more prominent by the bags under his eyes.

"Kakashi-sensei, are you-?"

"Sakura-chan! What're you doin' here?" Naruto somehow manages to say around a mouthful of noodles. Next to him, Sasuke picks at a plate of takoyaki with the air of a god sniffing out human offerings. Figures - no tomatoes.

"Shizune told me to take some time off and I knew you two would be here, so." Sakura slides into the seat opposite Sasuke, Kakashi taking the one next to her, and snags a piece of takoyaki off his plate as she signals to Teuchi, who immediately sets off to prepare her order. The one good thing about being attached to Naruto's hip for over five years is that she's become a regular at all the usual haunts. 

"You should go home," Sasuke says.

"What, worried I'll keel over right here? Don't worry, I just need a little ramen goodness in me and I'll be just fine." She wrinkles her nose. " _God_ , I can't believe I just said that."

"Don't you think it's time to go, Sakura?" Kakashi asks, "You've been gone long enough."

_No, it's too soon. It's too soon, I haven't seen everybody yet._

Sakura smacks him on the shoulder lightly, laughing in a poor attempt to stifle her unease. The world seems to shift before her eyes, the colours bleeding black and white and red - a blink, and it's back to normal. She tightens her grip on the counter, drumming out a staccato that barely matches the frantic beat of her heart. 

She can't go. She's home. This is home. Team 7 and Konoha in the spring. Everything she could've ever wanted, all within arm's reach so she can grab it and hold on and never let go. Not again.

_Summer. It's summer this time, Sakura. You wanted something warmer._

"I'm happy here," she whispers, "Can I just stay here?"

"You can't," Sasuke intones, voice far too deep and gravelly to be his own. "You have to come back."

 _Please_ , Sakura wants to scream, but there's a thousand other things clawing at her throat, demanding to be let out and it's all she can do to swallow them back to keep them from shredding her in two. _Pleasepleasepleaseplease-_

"'s'ok, Sakura-chan," Naruto says warmly, the barest hints of a smile on his face as he waits for her to look at him. "We'll be ok. Go home."

"But--"

"Sakura." Sasuke reaches over to cup her cheek, directing her to meet his eyes, Sharingan spinning. She loved those eyes once. She loved the face attached to those eyes and the heart and soul and every broken, ugly thing hidden under his skin. A part of her will never stop loving all of him but those eyes.

She's so tired of those eyes.

"Please."

Sasuke's thumb swipes a tear away just as it slips off her lashes. He watches her kindly, warmly, and gives her _her_ smile, the one he's only ever directed at her, and says, "Close your eyes. Sakura-"

She closes her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

And opens them to Sharingan-red.

But it's wrong. It's circles, not stars, red with black and not black with red, and the hair is too long and bushy, jaw too square, lips too thin and it's the wrong _I'm sorry._

This one, she can't forgive.

"Five more minutes," she breathes as loudly as she dares to keep her voice from cracking.

"It's not safe to keep using the Sharingan on you like this. Not this often."

"Two minutes."

"Sakura-" A heavy sigh. For a second, she thinks he might try to brush her hair out of her face or finally get fed-up enough to drag her to face the light of day a hundred years before her time, but all he does is pat at her wet cheeks with his sleeve and sigh again.

"Sakura, I can't let you keep doing this-"

"I'll go to Izuna. Or anybody else with a Sharingan. I'll go and make sure they can't pull me back."

"Izuna doesn't know what your friends look like. He doesn't even know their names."

"Mebuki. My mother's name is Mebuki. Remember that. Please."

He clenches his jaw. "Mebuki. Fine."

"One minute. Just - I won't ask again."

She will. She'll ask every night and he'll say no and she'll never _beg_ but he cracks so easily when she turns the other way that he does it anyway, just to look into her eyes and see something other than apathy in their depths.

"One minute," Madara says, thumb tracing the inner part of her wrist. "What do you want it to be this time?"

"Summer. I like the summer."

His Sharingan spins and the world spins with it, going blood red then blindingly white and sleep black and-

"Rise and shine, Sakura! The test results you were waiting for just came in."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo if you want a link to a Sakura/multisaku server I'm in lemme know in comments and I'll DM you or reply w a link
> 
> also r&r pls thank goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> Like all good biryani, it's marinating.


End file.
